From Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies by Andrew Maynard
“Why can’t you scientists leave things alone? What
about my bit of washing, when there’s no washing
to do?”
—Mrs. Watson
In 2005, protesters from the group THONG (Topless Humans
Organized for Natural Genetics) paraded outside the Eddie Bauer
store in Chicago.[^142] They were protesting a relatively new line of
merchandise being offered by the store: “nano pants.” It was never
quite clear why the protesters were topless, although it did make the
event memorable. But it did allow a crude but clever appropriation
of the title of a 1959 lecture given by the physicist Richard Feynman.
At least one of the protesters had an arrow drawn on their back
pointing to their nether regions, along with the title of Feynman’s
talk, “There’s plenty of room at the bottom.”
Eddie Bauer’s nano pants used Nanotex®, a nanoscale fabric
coating that make the pants water-repellent and stain-resistant.
By enveloping each fiber with a nanoscopically thin layer of
water-repellent molecules, the nano pants took on the seemingly
miraculous ability to shed water, coffee, wine, ketchup, and
many other things that people tend to inadvertently spill on
themselves without leaving a stain. It was a great technology for
the congenitally messy. But because it was marketed as being a
product of nanotechnology, there were concerns in some quarters—
including the THONG protesters—that putting such a cutting-edge
technology in consumer products might lead to new, unexpected,
and potentially catastrophic risks.
Sadly for THONG, the 2005 protest failed spectacularly. Rather than
consumers being warned off Eddie Bauer’s nano pants, there was
an uptick in sales, probably because, for most people, the benefits
of avoiding brown coffee stains were rather more attractive than
speculative worries about a dystopian nano-future. And to be honest,
the chance of this technology (which in reality wasn’t that radical)
leading to substantial harm was pretty negligible.
The nano pants incident was, in some ways, a preemptive parody
of Transcendence, with the existential threat of nanobots being
replaced with stain-resistant clothing, and the neo-Luddites trying
to save the world being played by a bunch of topless protesters.
Yet both the protest and the technology touched on the oftenmundane reality of modern nanotechnology, and the complex ways
in which seemingly beneficial inventions can sometimes threaten the
status quo.
As if to support the theory that there’s nothing new under the sun,
the 1951 movie The Man in the White Suit in turn foreshadowed
both the technology and the concerns that played out in that 2005
Chicago protest.
The Man in the White Suit was made in 1951, and is, remarkably,
a movie about stain-resistant pants. But more than this, it’s a
movie about the pitfalls of blinkered science and socially unaware
innovation. And while it is not a movie about nanotechnology per
se, it is remarkably prescient in how it foreshadows the complex
social and economic dynamics around nanotechnology, and
advanced materials more generally.
The movie is set in the textile mills of the early- to mid-1900s
North of England. This was a time when the burgeoning science of
chemical synthesis was leading to a revolution in artificial textiles.
Nylon, Draylon, and other manmade materials were becoming
increasingly important commodities, and ones that were emerging
from what was then cutting-edge science. Spurred on by these
advances, mill owners continued to search for new materials that
would give them an edge in a highly competitive market. These
In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, there was what now
seems like a remarkable separation between the academic world
of science and the more practically oriented world of engineering.
Innovators in the Industrial Revolution largely learned by trial
and error and relied heavily on the art and craft of engineering.
Human ingenuity and inventiveness enabled new discoveries to be
translated into powerful and practical new technologies, yet rigorous
scientific research was not typically a large part of this.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, though, it became
apparent that, by using a more scientific methodology based on
predictive laws, models, and associations, companies could make
breakthroughs that far exceeded the limitations of invention by mere
trial and error. At the same time, the social legacy of the Luddite
movement was still alive and kicking in the North of England, and
there was a strong labor movement that doggedly strove to protect
the rights of workers and ensure that new technologies didn’t sweep
jobs and people aside quite as indiscriminately as it had done a
century or so earlier.
Against this backdrop, The Man in the White Suit introduces us
to Sidney Stratton (played by Alec Guinness), a self-absorbed
chemist who is convinced he has the key to an amazing new fabric,
and simply needs the space and equipment to test and develop
his theories. Stratton could have had a glittering career at a top
university, but he was shunned by his academic colleagues for his
radical and obsessive ideas. So instead, he insinuates himself into
an industrial lab, where he can carry out his research with relatively
little interference. Everything goes swimmingly until the owner of
the factory he’s working at starts to ask awkward questions.
Stratton is something of a lone genius.[^143] He despises the lack
of imagination he sees in his more conventionally-minded and
institutionalized colleagues and prefers to work on his own. His
strategy of carving out some personal space in an industrial lab
seems to be working, until it’s realized that no one can explain
textile mills were rooted in an Industrial Revolution that had started
nearly two hundred years earlier. Yet they marked a tipping point
from using try-it-and-see engineering in manufacturing to relying on
predictive science in the development of new products.
exactly what it is he’s doing, and why his research is costing the
company so much.
As his proclivity for spending company resources on unfathomable
research is discovered, Stratton is dismissed. But, intent on pursuing
his science, he gets a job at a competing firm; not as a scientist,
but as a porter. From here, he finds a way to secretly conduct his
research in the company’s lab. At this point we’re introduced to
Bertha (Vida Hope), a union rep who assumes Stratton is a laborer
like herself, and who is fiercely committed to protecting his labor
rights as a result.
As Stratton works at his double life, the lab takes delivery of a
smart new electron microscope.[^144] While the rest of the scientists
are struggling to make sense of this complex piece of equipment,
Stratton can’t resist showing off and explaining how to use it. As
a result, he’s mistaken for an expert from the electron microscope
supplier, and is taken on by the textile company to run the
instrument. And in the process, he gets full and unfettered access to
the lab.
Stratton’s double life as a laborer and an illicit lab scientist
works out rather well for him, despite Bertha’s suspicions that
the management are taking advantage of him. That is, until he’s
recognized as the formerly-disgraced scientist by the company
director’s daughter, Daphne (played by Joan Greenwood).
Worried that Sidney’s up to his old tricks of spending the company
profits on indecipherable experiments, she rushes to inform her
father. But before she gets to him, Sidney manages to persuade
her that he’s onto something. Intrigued, Daphne reads up on her
chemistry, and realizes that he could be right.
Daphne allows Sidney to continue his work, and with her support,
he successfully synthesizes the material he’s been striving for: a
super-strong synthetic thread that never wears out and never gets
dirty.
In Stratton’s scientist-brain, this breakthrough is going to transform
the world. He assumes that people are sick of washing, mending,
and replacing their clothes, and that his invention will liberate
them. He dreams of a future where you only need to buy one set of
clothes—ever. In Stratton’s head, what’s good for him is also good
But there’s a problem—several, as it turns out. And one of the
biggest is that Sidney never thought to ask anyone else what they
wanted or needed.
Stratton is so excited by his discovery that he rushes to the company
director Alan Birnley’s home to give him the good news. What
he doesn’t know is that Birnley (played by Cecil Parker) has just
learned that Stratton has been blowing through the company’s R&D
budget. Birnley refuses to listen to Stratton, and instead sacks him.
However, Daphne points out that her father has just waved goodbye
to one of the biggest discoveries ever made in the textile world,
and Stratton is persuaded to come back and work for him. In the
meantime, word of the discovery has leaked out, and everything
begins to fall apart.
While Birnley is fixated on the short-term profits he’s going to make
off of Stratton’s invention, others in the textile industry realize that
this is not going to end well. They need their products to wear out
and need replacing if they’re to stay in business, and the very last
thing they need is clothes that last forever. So they hatch a plan to
persuade Stratton to sign over the rights to his invention, so they
can bury it.
To make matters worse, it quickly becomes apparent that the mill
owners and their investors aren’t the only ones who stand to lose
from Sidney’s invention. If the industry collapsed because of his
new textile, the workforce would be out on the streets. And so, in
a Luddite-like wave of self-interest, they also set about challenging
Sidney, not because they are anti-science, but because they are prohaving jobs that pay the bills.
The more people hear about Stratton’s invention, the more they
realize that this seemingly-great discovery is going to make life
harder for them. Even Sidney’s landlady plaintively asks, “Why can’t
you scientists leave things alone? What about my bit of washing,
when there’s no washing to do?” In his naïvety, it becomes clear that
Stratton didn’t give a second thought to the people he claimed he
was doing his research for, and, as a result, he hits roadblocks he
never imagined existed.
As everything comes to a head, Sidney finds himself in his white
suit, made of the new indestructible, unstainable cloth, being chased
for everyone, and a world without the messiness of buying, washing,
and looking after clothes is definitely one that he’s excited about.
by manufacturers, laborers, colleagues, and pretty much everyone
else who has realized that what they really cannot abide, is a smartass scientist who didn’t think to talk to them before doing research
he claimed was for their own good.
Just as he’s cornered by the mob, Sidney discovers the full extent of
his hubris. Far from being indestructible, his new fabric has a fatal
flaw. His wonder material is unstable, and after a few days, it begins
to disintegrate. And so, in front of the crowd, his clothes begin
to quite literally fall apart. Scientific hubris turns to humility and
ridicule, and everyone but Stratton leaves secure in the knowledge
that, clever as they might be, scientists like Sidney are, at the end of
the day, not particularly smart.
And Stratton? His pride is dented, but not his ambition—nor
his scientific myopia, it would seem. In an admirable display of
disdain for learning the lessons of his social failures, he begins
work on fixing the science he got wrong in his quest to create the
perfect fabric.
The Man in the White Suit admittedly feels a little dated these days,
and, even by 1950s British comedy standards, it’s dry. Yet the movie
successfully manages to address some of the biggest challenges we
face in developing socially responsible and responsive technologies,
including institutional narrow-mindedness, scientific myopia and
hubris, ignorance over the broader social implications, human greed
and self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended outcomes. And
of course, it’s remarkably prescient of Eddie Bauer’s nano pants
and the protests they inspired. And while the movie uses polymer
chemistry as its driving technology, much of it applies directly to the
emerging science of nanoscale design and engineering that led to
the nano pants, and a myriad other nanotechnology-based products.
On December 29, 1959, the physicist Richard Feynman gave a talk
at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society, which
was held that year at the California Institute of Technology. In his
opening comments, Feynman noted:
“What I want to talk about is the problem of manipulating and
controlling things on a small scale.”[^145]
Feynman was intrigued with what could be achieved if we could
only manipulate matter at the scale of individual atoms and
molecules. At the time, he was convinced that scientists and
engineers had barely scratched the surface of what was possible
here, so much so that he offered a $1,000 prize for the first person
to work out how to write out a page of a book in type so minuscule
it was at 1:25,000 scale.[^146]
Feynman’s talk didn’t garner that much attention at first. But, over
the following decades, it was increasingly seen as a milestone
in thinking about what could be achieved if we extended our
engineering mastery to the nanometer scale of atoms and molecules.
In 1986, Eric Drexler took this up in his book Engines of Creation
and popularized the term “nanotechnology.” Yet it wasn’t until the
1990s, when the US government became involved, that the emerging
field of nanotechnology hit the big-time.
What intrigued Feynman, Drexler, and the scientists that followed
them was the potential of engineering with the finest building
blocks available, the atoms and molecules that everything’s made
of (the “base code” of physical materials, in the language of
chapter nine). As well as the finesse achievable with atomic-scale
“I would like to describe a field, in which little has been done,
but in which an enormous amount can be done in principle.
This field is not quite the same as the others in that it will not
tell us much of fundamental physics (in the sense of, “What are
the strange particles?”) but it is more like solid-state physics
in the sense that it might tell us much of great interest about
the strange phenomena that occur in complex situations.
Furthermore, a point that is most important is that it would
have an enormous number of technical applications.
engineering,[^147] scientists were becoming increasingly excited by
some of the more unusual properties that matter exhibits at the
nanoscale, including changes in conductivity and magnetism, and
a whole range of unusual optical behaviors. What they saw was an
exciting new set of ways they could play with the “code of atoms” to
make new materials and products.
In the 1980s, this emerging vision was very much in line with
Drexler’s ideas. But in the 1990s, there was an abrupt change
in direction and expectations. And it occurred at about the time
the US federal government made the decision to invest heavily
in nanotechnology.
In the 1990s, biomedical science in the US was undergoing
something of a renaissance, and federal funding was flowing freely
into the US’s premier biomedical research agency, the National
Institutes of Health. This influx of research funding was so
prominent that scientists at the National Science Foundation—NIH’s
sister agency—worried that their agency was in danger of being
marginalized. What they needed was a big idea, one big enough
to sell to Congress and the President as being worthy of a massive
injection of research dollars.
Building on the thinking of Feynman, Drexler, and others, the NSF
began to develop the concept of nanotechnology as something they
could sell to policy makers. It was a smart move, and one that was
made all the smarter by the decision to conceive of this as a crossagency initiative. Smarter still was the idea to pitch nanotechnology
as a truly interdisciplinary endeavor that wove together emerging
advances in physics, chemistry, and biology, and that had something
for everyone in it. What emerged was a technological platform that
large numbers of researchers could align their work with in some
way, that had a futuristic feel, and that was backed by scientific and
business heavyweights. At the heart of this platform was the promise
that, by shaping the world atom by atom, we could redefine our
future and usher in “the next Industrial Revolution.”[^148]
This particular framing of nanotechnology caught on, buoyed up by
claims that the future of US jobs and economic prosperity depended
Eighteen years later, the NNI is still going strong. As an initiative, it
has supported some incredible advances in nanoscale science and
engineering, and it has led the growth of nanotechnology the world
over. Yet, despite the NNI’s successes, it has not delivered on what
Eric Drexler and a number of others originally had in mind. Early
on, there was a sharp and bitter split between Drexler and those
who became proponents of mainstream nanotechnology, as Drexler’s
vision of atomically precise manufacturing was replaced by more
mundane visions of nanoscale materials science.
With hindsight, this isn’t too surprising. Drexler’s ideas were bold
and revolutionary, and definitely not broadly inclusive of existing
research and development. In contrast, because mainstream
nanotechnology became a convenient way to repackage existing
trends in science and engineering, it was accessible to a wide range
of researchers. Regardless of whether you were a materials scientist,
a colloid chemist, an electron microscopist, a molecular biologist, or
even a toxicologist, you could, with little effort, rebrand yourself as
a nanotechnologist. Yet despite the excitement and the hype—and
some rather Transcendence-like speculation—what has come to be
known as nanotechnology actually has its roots in early-twentiethcentury breakthroughs.
In 1911, the physicist Earnest Rutherford proposed a novel model of
the atom. Drawing on groundbreaking experiments from a couple of
years earlier, Rutherford’s model revolutionized our understanding
of atoms, and underpinned a growing understanding of, not only
how atoms and molecules come together to make materials, but how
their specific arrangements affect the properties of those materials.
Building on Rutherford’s work, scientists began to develop
increasingly sophisticated ways to map out the atomic composition
and structure of materials. In 1912, it was discovered that the regular
arrangement of atoms in crystalline materials could diffract X-rays
in ways that allowed their structure to be deduced. In 1931, the
on investing in it. In 2000, President Clinton formed the US National
Nanotechnology Initiative, a cross-agency initiative that continues
to oversee billions of dollars of federal research and development
investment in nanotechnology.[^149]
first electron microscope was constructed. By the 1950s, scientists
like Rosalind Franklin were using X-rays to determine the atomic
structure of biological molecules. This early work on the atomic and
molecular makeup of materials laid the foundations for the discovery
of DNA’s structure, the emergence of transistors and integrated
circuits, and the growing field of materials science. It was a heady
period of discovery, spurred on by the realization that atoms, and
how they’re arranged, are the key to how materials behave.
By the time Feynman gave his lecture in 1959, scientists were well
on the way to understanding how the precise arrangement of atoms
in a material determines what properties it might exhibit. What they
weren’t so good at was using this emerging knowledge to design
and engineer new materials. They were beginning to understand
how things worked at the nano scale, but they still lacked the tools
and the engineering dexterity to take advantage of this knowledge.
This is not to say that there weren’t advances being made in
nanoscale engineering at the time—there were. The emergence
of increasingly sophisticated synthetic chemicals, for instance,
depended critically on scientists being able to form new molecules
by arranging the atoms they were made of in precise ways, and, in
the early 1900s, scientists were creating a growing arsenal of new
chemicals. At the same time, scientists and engineers were getting
better at making smaller and smaller particles, and using some of
the convenient properties that come with “smallness,” like adding
strength to composite materials and preventing powders from
caking. By the 1950s, companies were intentionally manufacturing
a range of nanometer-scale powders out of materials like silicon
dioxide and carbon.
As the decades moved on, materials scientists became increasingly
adept at manufacturing nanoscopically small particles with precisely
designed properties, especially in the area of catalysts. Catalysts
work by increasing the speed and likelihood of specific chemical
reactions taking place, while reducing the energy needed to initiate
them. From the early 1900s, using fine particles as catalysts—socalled heterogeneous catalysts—became increasingly important in
industry, as they slashed the costs and energy overheads of chemical
processing. Because catalytic reactions occur at the surface of these
particles, the smaller the particles, the more overall surface area
there is for reactions to take place on, and the more effective the
catalyst is.
As scientists began to understand how particle size changes
material behavior, they began developing increasingly sophisticated
particle-based catalysts that were designed to speed up reactions
and help produce specific industrial chemicals. But they also began
to understand how the precise atomic configuration of everything
around us affects the properties of materials, and can in principle be
used to design how a material behaves.
This realization led to the field of materials science growing rapidly
in the 1970s, and to the emergence of novel electronic components,
integrated circuits, computer chips, hard drives, and pretty much
every piece of digital gadgetry we now rely on. It also paved the
way for the specific formulation of nanotechnology adopted by
the US government and by governments and scientists around the
world.
In this way, the NNI successfully rebranded a trend in science,
engineering, and technology that stretched back nearly one hundred
years. And because so many people were already invested in
research and development involving atoms and molecules, they
simply had to attach the term “nanotechnology” to their work, and
watch the dollars flow. This tactic was so successful that, some years
ago, a colleague of mine cynically defined nanotechnology as “a
fourteen-letter fast track to funding.”
Despite the cynicism, “brand nanotechnology” has been
phenomenally successful in encouraging interdisciplinary research
and development, generating new knowledge, and inspiring a new
generation of scientists and engineers. It’s also opened the way to
combining atomic-scale design and engineering with breakthroughs
in biological and cyber sciences, and in doing so it has stimulated
technological advances at the convergence of these areas. But “brand
This led to increasing interest in creating nanometer-sized catalytic
particles. But there was another advantage to using microscopically
small particles in this way. When particles get so small that they
are made of only a few hundred to a few thousand atoms, the
precise arrangement of the atoms in them can lead to unexpected
behaviors. For instance, some particles that aren’t catalytic at larger
sizes become catalytic at the nano scale. Other particles interact
with light differently; gold particles, for instance, appear red below a
certain size. Others still can flip from being extremely inert to being
highly reactive.
nanotechnology” is most definitely not what was envisioned by Eric
Drexler in the 1980s.
The divergence between Drexler’s vision of nanotechnology and
today’s mainstream ideas goes back to the 1990s and a widely
publicized clash of opinions between Drexler and chemist Richard
Smalley.[^150] Where Drexler was a visionary, Smalley was a pragmatist.
More than this, as the co-discoverer of the carbon-60 molecule (for
which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1996, along with Robert
Curl and Harry Kroto) and a developer of carbon nanotubes (a
highly novel nanoscale form of carbon), he held considerable sway
within established scientific circles. As the US government’s concept
of nanotechnology began to take form, it was Smalley’s version that
won out and Drexler’s version that ended up being sidelined.
Because of this, the nanoscale science and engineering of today
looks far more like the technology in The Man in the White Suit
than the nanobots in Transcendence. Yet, despite the hype behind
“brand nano,” nanoscale science and engineering is continuing to
open up tremendous opportunities, and not just in the area of stainresistant fabrics. By precisely designing and engineering complex,
multifunctional particles, scientists are developing new ways to
design and deliver powerful new cancer treatments. Nanoscale
engineering is leading to batteries that hold more energy per
gram of material, and release it faster, than any previous battery
technology. Nanomaterials are leading to better solar cells, faster
electronics, and more powerful computers. Scientists are even
programming DNA to create new nanomaterials. Hype aside, we are
learning to master the material world, and become adept in coding
in the language of atoms and molecules. But just as with Stratton’s
wonder material, with many of these amazing breakthroughs that
are arising from nanoscale science and engineering, there are also
unintended consequences that need to be grappled with.
In 2000, I published a scientific paper with the somewhat
impenetrable title “A simple model of axial flow cyclone
Like many scientists, I was much more wrapped up in the scientific
puzzles I was trying to untangle than in how relevant the work was
to others. Certainly, I justified the research by saying it could lead to
better ways of protecting workers from inhaling dangerous levels of
dust. If I was honest, though, I was more interested in the science
than its outcomes. At the same time, I was quite happy to coopt
a narrative of social good so that I could continue to satisfy my
scientific curiosity.
I suspect the same is true for many researchers. And this isn’t
necessarily a bad thing. Science progresses because some people
are driven by their curiosity, their desire to discover new things and
to see what they can do with their new knowledge. While this is
often inspired by making the world a better place or solving tough
challenges, I suspect that it’s the process of discovery, or the thrill
of making something that works, that keeps many scientists and
engineers going.
This is actually why I ended up pursuing a career in science. From
a young age, I wanted to do something that would improve people’s
lives (I was, I admit, a bit of an earnest child). But my true love
was physics. I was awestruck by the insights that physics provided
into how the universe works. And I was utterly enthralled by how
a grasp of the mathematics, laws, and principles of physics opened
up new ways of seeing the world. To me physics was—and still
is—a disciplined way of thinking and understanding that is both
awe-inspiring and humbling, revealing the beauty and elegance
of the universe we live in while making it very clear that we are
little more than privileged observers in the grand scheme of things.
It challenged me with irresistible puzzles, and filled me with
amazement as I made new discoveries in the process of trying to
solve them. While I’ve always been mindful of the responsibility of
performance under laminar flow conditions.” It was the culmination
of two years’ research into predicting the performance of a new
type of airborne dust sampler. At the time, I was pretty excited by
the mathematics and computer modeling involved. But despite the
research and its publication, I suspect that the work never had much
impact beyond adorning the pages of an esoteric scientific journal.[^151]
science to serve society, I must confess that it’s often the science
itself that has been my deepest inspiration.
Because of this, I have a bit of a soft spot for Sidney Stratton. This is
someone who’s in love with his science. He’s captivated by the thrill
of the scientific chase, as he uses his knowledge to solve the puzzle
of a stronger, more durable textile. And while he justifies his work in
terms of how it will improve people’s lives, I suspect that it’s really
the science that’s driving him.
Stratton is, in some ways, the epitome of the obsessed scientist.
He captures the single-mindedness and benevolent myopia I see in
many of my peers, and even myself at times. He has a single driving
purpose, which is synthesizing a new polymer that he is convinced
it’s possible to produce. He has a vague idea that this will be a
good thing for society, and this is a large part of the narrative he
uses to justify his work. But his concept of social good is indistinct,
and rather naïve. We see no indication, for instance, that he’s ever
considered learning about the people he’s trying to help, or even
asking them what they want. Instead, he is ignorant of the people
he claims his work is for. Rather than genuinely working with them,
he ends up appropriating them as a convenient justification for
doing what he wants.
Not that Stratton wants to cause any harm—far from it. His
intentions are quite well-meaning. And I suspect if he was
interviewed about his work, he’d spin a tale about the need for
science to make the world a better place. Yet he suffers from
social myopia in that he is seemingly incapable of recognizing the
broader implications of his work. As a result, he is blindsided when
the industrialists he thought would lap up his invention want to
suppress it.
Real-life scientists are, not surprisingly, far more complex. Yet
elements of this type of behavior are not that uncommon. And
they’re not just limited to researchers.
Some years back, I taught a graduate course in Entrepreneurial
Ethics. The class was designed for engineers with aspirations to
launch their own startup. Each year, we’d start the course talking
about values and aspirations, and with very few exceptions, my
students would say that they wanted to make the world a better
place. Yes, they were committed to the technologies they were
I then had them take part in an exercise where their task was to
make as much profit from their classmates as possible, by creating
and selling a piece of art. Each student started with a somewhat
random set of raw materials to make their art from, together with
a wad of fake money to purchase art they liked from others in the
class. There were basically no rules to the exercise beyond doing
whatever it took to end up with the most money. As an incentive,
the winner got a $25 Starbucks voucher.
Every year I ran this, some students found ethically “inventive” ways
to get that Starbucks card—and this is, remember, after expressing
their commitment to improving other people’s lives. Even though
this was a game, it didn’t take much for participants’ values to fly
out of the window in the pursuit of personal gain. One year, an
enterprising student formed a consortium that was intended to
prevent anyone outside it from winning the exercise, regardless of
the creation of any art (they claimed the consortium agreement was
their “art”). Another year, a student realized they could become an
instant millionaire by photocopying the fake money, then use this to
purchase their own art, thus winning the prize.
In both of these examples, students who were either too
unimaginative or too ethical to indulge in such behavior were
morally outraged: How could their peers devolve so rapidly into
ethically questionable behavior? Yet the exercise was set up to
bring out exactly this type of behavior, and to illustrate how hard
it is to translate good intentions into good actions. Each year, the
exercise demonstrated just how rapidly a general commitment to the
good of society (or the group) disintegrated into self-interest when
participants weren’t self-aware enough, or socially aware enough, to
understand the consequences of their actions.[^152]
A similar tendency toward general benevolence and specific selfinterest is often seen in science, and is reflected in what we see
in Stratton’s behavior. Most scientists (including engineers and
technologists) I’ve met and worked with want to improve and
enriches people’s lives. They have what I believe is a genuine
commitment to serving the public good in most cases. And they
freely and openly use this to justify their work. Yet surprisingly
few of them stop to think about what the “public good” means, or
developing, and to their commercial success, but they ultimately
wanted to use these to help other people.
to ask others for their opinions and ideas. Because of this, there’s
a tendency for them to assume they know what’s good for others,
irrespective of whether they’re right or not. As a result, too many
well-meaning scientists presume to know what society needs,
without thinking to ask first.
This is precisely what we see playing out with Stratton in The Man
in the White Suit. He firmly believes that his new polymer will make
the world a better place. Who wouldn’t want clothes that never get
dirty, that never need washing, that never need replacing? Yet at no
point does Stratton show the self-reflection, the social awareness,
the humility, or even the social curiosity, to ask people what they
think, and what they want. If he had, he might have realized that his
invention could spell economic ruin and lost jobs for a lot of people,
together with social benefits that were transitory at best. It might
not have curbed his enthusiasm for his research, but it might have
helped him see how to work with others to make it better.
Of course, modern scientists and technologists are more
sophisticated than Stratton. Yet, time after time, I run into scientists
who claim, almost in the same breath, that they are committed
to improving the lives of others, but that they have no interest in
listening to these people they are supposedly committing themselves
to. This was brought home to me some years ago, when I was
advising the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology (PCAST) on the safe and beneficial development of
nanotechnology. In one meeting, I pushed the point that scientists
need to be engaging with members of the public if they want to
ensure that their work leads to products that are trusted and useful.
In response, a very prominent scientist in the field replied rather
tritely, “That sounds like a very bad idea.”
I suspect that this particular scientist was thinking about the horrors
of a presumed scientifically-illiterate public telling him how to do
his research. Of course, he would be right to be horrified if he were
expected to take scientific direction from people who aren’t experts
in his particular field. But most people have a pretty high level
of expertise in what’s important to them and their communities,
and rather than expect members of the public to direct complex
research, it’s this expertise that it is important to use in guiding
research and development if naïve mistakes are to be avoided.
The reality here is that scientists and technologists don’t have a
monopoly on expertise and insights. For new technologies to have a
Some time ago, I was at a meeting where an irate scientist turned to
a room of policy experts and exclaimed, “I’m a scientist—just stop
telling me how to do my job and let me get on with it. I know what
I’m doing!”153
The setting was a National Academy of Sciences workshop on
planetary protection, and we were grappling with the challenges
of exploring other worlds without contaminating them or, worse,
bringing virulent alien bugs back to earth. As it turns out, this is a
surprisingly tough issue. Fail to remove all Earth-based biological
contamination from a spacecraft and the instruments it carries, and
you risk permanently contaminating the planet or moon you’re
exploring, making it impossible to distinguish what’s truly alien
from what is not. But make the anti-contamination requirements
too stringent, and you make it next to impossible to search for
extraterrestrial life in the first place.
There are similar problems with return samples. Play fast and
loose with safety precautions, and we could end up unleashing a
deadly alien epidemic on Earth (although, to be honest, this is more
science fiction than science likelihood). On the other hand, place
a million and one barriers in the way of bringing samples back,
and we kill off any chance of studying the biological origins of
extraterrestrial life.
To help tread this fine line, international regulations on “planetary
protection” (which, despite the name, is not about protecting
the Earth from asteroid hits, or space debris, or even us trashing
other planets, but instead is geared toward managing biological
contamination in space exploration) were established in 1967 to
I’m paraphrasing, but this was the essence of the frustrated outburst.
positive impact in a messy world of people, politics, beliefs, values,
economics, and a plethora of other interests, scientists and others
need to be a part of larger conversations around how to draw on
expertise that spans all of these areas and more. Not being a part of
such conversations leads to scientific elitism, and ignorance that’s
shrouded in arrogance. Of course, there is nothing wrong with
scientists doing their science for science’s sake. But willful ignorance
of the broader context that research is conducted within leads to
myopia that can ultimately be harmful, despite the best of intentions.
ensure we don’t make a mess of things.[^154] These regulations mean
that, when an agency like NASA funds a mission, the scientists and
engineers developing vehicles and equipment have to go through
what, to them, is a bureaucratic nightmare, to do the smallest thing.
To space exploration scientists, this can feel a little like an imposed
form of bureaucratic obsessive-compulsive disorder, designed to
send even the mildest-mannered person into a fit of pique. What
makes it worse is that, for scientists and engineers working on
years-long missions designed to detect signs of life elsewhere in the
universe, they are deeply aware of what’s at stake. If they get things
wrong, decades of work and hundreds of millions of dollars—not to
mention their scientific reputations—are put at risk. So they’re pretty
obsessive about getting things right, even before the bureaucrats
get involved. And what really winds them up (or some of them at
least) is being told that they need to fill out yet more paperwork,
or redesign their equipment yet again, because some bureaucrat
decided to flex their planetary protection muscles.
This frustration reached venting point in the National Academy
meeting I was at. Speaking to a room of planetary protection
experts—some of whom were directly involved in establishing and
implementing current policies—the scientist couldn’t contain his
frustration. As the lead scientist on a critical mission to discover
evidence of life beyond Earth, he knew what he had to do to be
successful, or so he thought. And in his mind, the room of “experts”
in front of him had no idea how ignorant they were about his
expertise. He even started to lecture them in quite strong terms on
policies that some of them had helped write. It probably wasn’t a
particularly smart move.
I must confess that, listening to his frustrations, I had quite a bit
of sympathy for him. He was clearly good at what he does, and
he just wanted to get on with it. But he made two fatal errors. He
forgot that science never happens in a vacuum, and he deeply
underestimated the inertia of the status quo.
This anecdote may seem somewhat removed from nanotechnology,
synthetic chemistry, and The Man in the White Suit. Yet there are
a surprising number of similarities between this interplanetary
scientist and Sidney Stratton. Both are brilliant scientists. Both
The harsh reality is that discovery never happens in isolation. There
are always others with a stake in the game, and there’s always
someone else who is potentially impacted by what transpires. This is
the lesson that John Hammond was brutally reminded of in Jurassic
Park (chapter two). It underpins the technological tensions in
Transcendence (chapter nine). And it’s something that Sidney wakes
up to rather abruptly, as he discovers that not everyone shares his
views.
Here, The Man in the White Suit has overtones of Luddism, with
workers and industry leaders striving to maintain the status
quo, regardless of how good or bad it is. Yet just as the Luddite
movement was more nuanced than simply being anti-technology,
here we see that the resistance to Sidney’s discovery is not a
resistance to technological innovation, but a fight against something
that threatens what is deeply important to the people who are
resisting it. The characters in the movie aren’t Luddites in the
pejorative sense, and they are not scientifically illiterate. Rather, they
are all too able to understand the implications of the technology that
Sidney is developing. As they put the pieces together, they realize
that, in order to protect the lives they have, they have to act.
Just as in the meeting on planetary protection, what emerges in
The Man in the White Suit is a situation where everyone is shrewd
enough to see how change supports or threatens what they value,
and they fight to protect this value. As a result, no one really wins.
Sure, the factory owners and workers win a short reprieve against
the march of innovation, and they get to keep things going as they
were before. But all this does is rob them of the ability to adapt
to inevitable change in ways that could benefit everyone. And, of
course, Sidney suffers a humiliating defeat at the hands of those he
naïvely thought he was helping.
What the movie captures so well as it ends—and one of the
reasons it’s in this book—is that there is nothing inherently bad
about Sidney’s technology. On the contrary, it’s a breakthrough
that could lead to tremendous benefits for many people, just like
the nanotechnology it foreshadows. Rather, it’s the way that it’s
handled that causes problems. As with every disruptive innovation,
believe they have the knowledge and ability to deliver what they
promise. Both would like nothing better than to be left alone to do
their stuff. And neither is aware of the broader social context within
which they operate.
Sidney’s new textile threatened the status quo. Naturally, there were
going to be hurdles to its successful development and use, and not
being aware of those hurdles created risks that could otherwise be
avoided. Self-preservation and short-sightedness ended up leading
to social and economic benefits being dashed against the rocks
of preserving the status quo. But things could have been very
different. What if the main characters had been more aware of the
broader picture; what if they had bothered to talk to others and
find out about their concerns and aspirations; and what if they had
collectively worked toward a way forward that benefitted everyone?
Admittedly, it would have led to a rather boring movie. But from
the perspective of beneficial and responsible innovation, the future
could have looked a whole lot brighter.
Not so long ago, at a meeting about AI, I had a conversation with
a senior company executive about the potential downsides of the
technology. He admitted that AI has some serious risks associated
with it if we get it wrong, so much so that he was worried about
the impact it would have if it got out of hand. Yet, when pushed, he
shied away from any suggestion of talking with people who might
be impacted by the technology. Why? Because he was afraid that
misunderstandings resulting from such engagement would lead to
a backlash against the technology, and as a result, place roadblocks
in the way of its development that he felt society could ill afford. It
was a perfect example of a “let’s not talk” approach to technological
innovation, and one that, as Sidney Stratton discovered to his cost,
rarely works.
The irony here is that it’s the misunderstanding and
miscommunication from not talking (or to be precise, not listening
and engaging) that makes The Man in the White Suit a successful
comedy. As the audience, we are privy to a whole slew of comedic
misunderstandings and resulting farcical situations that could have
been avoided if the characters had simply taken the time to sit down
with each other. From the privileged position of our armchairs, this
all makes perfect sense. But things are rarely so obvious in the realworld rough-and-tumble of technology innovation.
To many technology developers, following a “let’s not talk” strategy
makes quite a bit of sense on the surface. If we’re being honest,
people do sometimes get the wrong end of the stick when it comes
to new technologies. And there is a very real danger of consumers,
Perhaps just as importantly, keeping quiet may seem expedient, but
it’s not always ethical. If an emerging technology has the potential
to cause harm, or to disrupt lives and livelihoods, it’s relevant to
everyone it potentially touches. In this case, as a developer, you
probably shouldn’t have complete autonomy over deciding what you
do, or the freedom to ignore those whom your products potentially
affect. Irrespective of the potential hurdles to development (and
profit) that are caused by engaging with stakeholders (meaning
anyone who potentially stands to gain or lose by what you do),
there’s a moral imperative to engage broadly when a technology has
the potential to impact society significantly.
On top of this, developers of new technologies rarely have the
fullest possible insight into how to develop their technology
beneficially and responsibly. All of us, it has to be said, have a
bit of Sidney Stratton in us, and are liable to make bad judgment
calls without realizing it. Often, the only way to overcome this is
to engage with others who bring a different perspective and set of
values to the table.
In other words, it’s good to talk when it comes to developing
impactful new technologies. Or rather, it’s good to listen to and
engage with each other, and explore mutually beneficial ways of
developing technologies that benefit both their investors and society
more broadly, and that don’t do more harm than good. Yet this is
easier said than done. And there are risks. My AI executive was right
to be concerned about engaging with people because sometimes
people don’t like what they hear, and they decide to make your life
difficult as a result. Yet there’s also a deep risk to holding back and
not talking, and in the long run this is usually the larger of the two.
Talking’s tough. But not talking is potentially more dangerous.
policy makers, advocacy groups, journalists, and others creating
barriers to technological progress through their speculations about
potential future outcomes. That said, there are serious problems
with this way of thinking. For one thing, it’s incredibly hard to
keep things under wraps these days. The chances are that, unless
you’re involved in military research or a long way from a marketable
product, people are going to hear about what you are doing. And
if you’re not engaging with them, they’ll form their own opinions
about what your work means to them. As a result, staying quiet is
an extremely high-risk strategy, especially as, once people start to
talk about your tech, they’ll rapidly fill any information vacuum that
exists, and not necessarily with stuff that makes sense.
One way that people have tried to get around this “toughness”
is a process called the Danish Consensus Conference. This is
an approach that takes a small group of people from different
backgrounds and perspectives and provides an environment where
they can learn about an issue and its consequences before exploring
productive ways forward. The power of the Danish Consensus
Conference is that it gets people talking and listening to each other
in a constructive and informed way. Done right, it overcomes many
of the challenges of people not understanding an issue and reverting
to protecting their interests out of ignorance. But it does have its
limitations. And one of the biggest is that very few people have the
time to go through such a time-consuming process. This gets to
the heart of perhaps the biggest challenge in public engagement
around emerging technologies: Most people are too busy working
all hours to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, or
caring for family, or simply surviving, to have the time and energy
for somewhat abstract conversations about seemingly esoteric
technologies. There’s simply not enough perceived value to them to
engage.
So how do we square the circle here? How do we ensure that
the relevant people are at the table when deciding how new
technologies are developed and used, so we don’t end up in a
farcical mess? Especially as we live in a world where everyone’s
busy, and the technologies we’re developing, together with their
potential impacts, are increasingly complex?
The rather frustrating answer is that that there are no simple
answers here. However, a range of approaches is emerging that,
together, may be able to move things along at least a bit. Despite
being cumbersome, the Danish Consensus Conference remains
relevant here, as do similar processes such as Expert & Citizen
Assessment of Science & Technology (ECAST).[^155] But there are
many more formal and informal ways in which people with
different perspectives and insights can begin to talk and listen and
engage around emerging technologies. These include the growing
range of opportunities that social media provides for peer-to-peer
engagement (with the caveat that social media can shut down
engagement as well as opening it up). They also include using
venues and opportunities such as science museums, TED talks,
science cafes, poetry slams, citizen science, and a whole cornucopia
of other platforms.
Making progress on this front could help foster more constructive
discussions around the beneficial and responsible development of
new technologies. It would, however, mean people being willing
to concede that they don’t have the last word on what’s right,
and being open to not only listening to others, but changing their
perspectives based on this. This goes for the scientists as well
as everyone else, because, while scientists may understand the
technical intricacies of what they do, just like Sidney Stratton, they
are often not equally knowledgeable about the broader social
implications of their work, as we see to chilling effect in our next
movie: Inferno.
The good news is that there are more ways than ever for people to
engage around developing responsible and beneficial technologies,
and to talk with each other about what excites them and what
concerns them. And with platforms like Wikipedia, YouTube, and
other ways of getting content online, it’s never been easier to come
up to speed on what a new technology is and what it might do.
All that’s lacking is the will and imagination of experts to use these
platforms to facilitate effective engagement around the responsible
and beneficial development of new technologies. Here, there are
tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurially- and socially-minded
innovators to meet people where they’re at, in and on the many
venues and platforms they inhabit, and to nudge conversations
toward a more inclusive, informed and responsible dialogue around
emerging technologies.
[^142]: Howard Lovy wrote a great account of the protest in Wired. Howard Lovy (2005) “When nano pants attack.” Published in Wired, June 10, 2005. https://www.wired.com/2005/06/when-nanopants-attack/
[^143]: The rules of effective narrative almost demand that, in many of the movies here, the science and technology that drives the plot is the product of a lone genius, entrepreneur, or visionary. In contrast, while real life is littered by charismatic figures, science and technology are almost always a team activity, with many smart people working together on their development.
[^144]: As a former electron microscopist, it’s gratifying to see The Man in the White Suit using what appears to be a correctly-set-up early transmission electron microscope.
[^145]: The transcript of Feynman’s 1959 lecture is posted in full on the company Zyvex’s website: http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html
[^146]: The prize was won twenty-six years after Feynman set the challenge by physicist Tom Newman, who wrote the first page of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities on a 200-µm square piece of plastic, using electron-beam lithography. For more information, see Katherine Kornei (2016) “The Beginning of Nanotechnology at the 1959 APS Meeting,” APS News, November 2016 https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201611/nanotechnology.cfm
[^147]: On September 28, 1989, IBM physicist Don Eigler used a scanning tunneling microscope to spell out the word “IBM” with 35 xenon atoms. It was the first time anyone had intentionally manipulated and moved individual atoms, and at the time appeared to open the way to achieving some of Feynman’s speculative ideas.
[^148]: The report “Nanotechnology: Shaping the World, Atom by Atom” was published by the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Technology, and the Interagency Working Group on Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology in 1999. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/IWGN.Nanotechnology.Brochure.pdf
[^149]: In the spirit of full disclosure, I was involved in the early days of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, and was the first co-chair of the interagency committee within the NNI to examine the environmental and health implications of nanotechnology.
[^150]: Early in the evolution of the NNI, Drexler went head to head with Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley as they clashed over the future of nanotechnology. A December 2003 cover story in the magazine Chemical & Engineering News provided a point-counterpoint platform for Drexler and Smalley to duke it out: https://courses.cs.duke.edu/cps296.4/spring08/papers/Drexler.v.Smalley.pdf Drexler talks about the subsequent marginalization of his ideas in his 2013 book, “Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization” (published by PublicAffairs). For more see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexler%E2%80%93Smalley_debate_on_molecular_nanotechnology
[^151]: I actually checked on Google Scholar to see how many people had cited the paper since its publication. Surprisingly, twenty-five people had liked it enough to refer to it in their own papers— more than I would have expected. However, at least two of those “fans” were me citing my own work, confirming that we’re all our own greatest cheerleaders when it comes to science. The paper was published in the Journal of Aerosol Science, volume 31 issue 2, pages 151-166 (2000), and can be read here, just in case you’re interested: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0021-8502(99)00035-X
[^152]: One of those consequences was having to deal with the ill will of fellow classmates who felt cheated, confirming that nothing is ever “just a game.”
[^154]: International planetary protection regulations were established in article IX of the 1966 United Nations Treaty on “Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies.” They are currently embodied in the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Planetary Protection Policy.
[^155]: You can read more about Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science & Technology at https://ecastnetwork.org/